Feelings

I used to be a crybaby. I cried whenever I got in trouble. I cried because I didn't like this one kid at my karate class. I cried because we got stuck on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I cried my first day in 2nd grade just because it was my first day of second grade. One time my best friend and I were waiting in line to get on the monkey bars. For some reason I decided to push him off the platform. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then he got hurt and started crying. And then I started crying too haha. I was a weird kid...

These days, I don't cry much anymore. I mean, there was that time I watched Armageddon and maybe once in awhile I'll get misty-eyed, but really, I'm not an emotional guy. It's something that's been eating at me recently. I'm really whatevers about everything. I hate it. I don't FEEL anything very deeply anymore. Sometimes I talk with those kinds of girls that get really emotional about everything... yknow those kinds of girls, right? They preface most sentences with an "OMG" or end other sentences with a really annoying whiny sound... yeah those girls (not directed at any specific person!). And as annoying as they get sometimes, I really wanna be like that. Well, not exactly like that, but I wanna feel things. I want my highs to be highs and maybe my lows to be kinda low too. For me, everything just kind hovers around the mean. Which, I guess could have its advantages too. I mean, I don't stress out very easily and I manage to keep my composure when things get weird. But sometimes, I really just wanna be a crybaby again.



I was watching this video. I luhh switchfoot. I'm excited for their new album. The part that gets me in this video is 2:10-2:35... I want that. I want to believe and love something so passionately that everything I do is an expression of my desperation for that thing. I wanna know that with every action I decide to make, that it's something I am willing to DIE doing. If the world ended this very second, would I be satisfied with the fact that the last thing I did on this earth was writing in my blog? Would you be satisfied knowing that the last thing you did was reading Nate Lee's random thoughts about his sensitive childhood??? That's a terrible thing to be doing! So go, do something with intention. Do something with feeling, with conviction, with passion. Screw what everyone else thinks. And when you're done, come back to me and give me advice on how you do it, because I need some help feeling things again.

Food, Music, and Compassion

Yes, I know you've been waiting. I am here to inform you, it is here. The Food Blog has arrived! I bet you're pretty excited. This flips the page to a new chapter in my bloglife. I know most food blogs include pictures of food that people have cooked themselves, but I think that's overrated. It's all about food that other people make and you just happen to have a camera around so you take a picture of it. Holla! Although, one of the pictures in this post is something I made myself, can you guess which one it is? It's a toughie, mostly because of my culinary skillz that killz.

(click for bigger pix)


Which one did I make???

So yeah I was thinking about food. And about music. Something about those two things is so intriguing. I mean, God (yeah you knew it would turn into a thing about God) could have made us like plants, just sucking up rays from the sun for our energy. But nah, he made food. What a great idea. And then there's music. I wish I could learn theory. Why is there music? What the eff is music? Why do certain notes just sound right with other notes? Why is music mathematical? Why does it all make sense? Crazy stuff...

So I'm taking a class about human happiness (only at Berkeley!). It's pretty interesting. The professor makes the claim that compassion or love is something that humans have evolved to have; essentially, compassion is an adaptation that enables a given organism to have a better chance of surviving. I actually hate the idea... that one day a caveman said, "Well shizz, when I show compassion to my cavebrotha, I actually have a greater chance of helping my genes pass through the generations!" I like the idea of love as this abstract, nice idea. If compassion is what my professor says it is, does that make it any less significant? Any less beautiful? ehh I dunno.

Just makes me wonder though. If he can reduce something like compassion down to an evolutionary byproduct, what else is up in the air? Does my food just taste good because the homo sapien has developed an affinity for fats and salts because of its scarcity in the evolutionary environment? Is music just a mating call?? What is life??? Who am I????

Yeeeaaaahhh... well I dunno what this post is about. Definitely not an argument for or against evolution, so don't get all butthurt about that kinda stuff. Sometimes it's just interesting hearing things that challenge concepts that you have taken for granted for so long. And I think that's a good thing.

More to come, thanks for reading.